


Letters

by wishingwellwriting



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Prison Spence, Spence gets really really sad and super lovey-dovey.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24828244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishingwellwriting/pseuds/wishingwellwriting
Summary: Loosely based off of Hey There Delilah. The poem belongs to Erin Hanson.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader
Kudos: 28





	Letters

**Author's Note:**

> The poem belongs to Erin Hanson.

She hadn’t written back. That’s all Spencer could think of, the only thought running through his head as his mattress sunk through the bars and pressed into his back. Two letters so far, two weeks between, save the first week. The letters kept her in his memory, the pen dipping into paper the only thing that kept her perfume wound around his soul. When the ink smeared across his too quick fingers, he cursed, closing his unfounded emotions within the confines of the cheap notebook paper. 

She hadn’t written back. It’s not like the letters had been particularly interesting. Spencer had never been an interesting writer, never been the one to capture someone’s attention. That was, until her. Until y/n. He had met her at a writer’s circle, something his mom had suggested. 

“You used to write so often, when you were a little boy.” Diana had mused on one of her infrequent good days. 

“I was young then, Mom, nothing I wrote was well-written.” Spencer had laughed with her, both of them remembering the mother’s day haikus that should’ve never been sent home.

“I’m just saying that the life you’ve lived deserves to be written down.” And so he went, attending a small after hours circle at a local community college. He saw her first. Her hair slung up haphazardly, pens tucked into the tendrils, one shirt sleeve slipping off of her shoulder, and her tongue sticking slightly out her mouth in concentration. She was a girl who could steal your attention from the first glance. One pen slipped out of her hair then, and he had leaned forward, picking it up and extending it to her with a smile. 

“Spencer.” He had offered, his name a gift to the girl who sat before him. He thought they probably looked like a painting, with the lanky boy kneeling in front of the ethereal girl, one hand extended with a pen obscured by his own spindly fingers.

“Y/n.” She gave her name right back, grabbing the pen from his hand. And that had been it. That one moment was all it took for Spencer to know he would follow where she went. They had become inseparable, no longer one without the other. They promised each other they’d come every single week, filled notebooks in hand. They stayed far too long after the circle had been dismissed, reading in hushed whispers and bodies so still the motion lights went dim. 

Spencer had felt himself start to fall on one particular night, when they had slipped out to her car to read, their voices filling the cramped car and breath fogging the windows. She had written a poem, something soft and fiery, and he remembered thinking it felt like an autobiography and a love song all at once as her sweet and lilting voice filled the air. 

> _ I wish that I could hold your heart,  _
> 
> _ Cradle it gently in my hands,  _
> 
> _ But my arms just are not strong enough,  _
> 
> _ To hold what I don 't understand,  _
> 
> _ My eyes have seen a lot of  _
> 
> _ And I thought I'd seen them all,  _
> 
> _ But the way your smile ignites my own,  _
> 
> _ Makes me think there's so much more,  _
> 
> _ These walls around this heart of mine,  _
> 
> _ Have stood dust,  _
> 
> _ But it's as though you've found the gate,  _
> 
> _ That leads right to my trust,  _
> 
> _ I've never really liked my name,  _
> 
> _ But on your lips it sounds so sweet,  _
> 
> _ And your voice is my new favourite song,  _
> 
> _ That's forever on repeat,  _
> 
> _ But even though I feel all this,  _
> 
> _ I can never let you see,  _
> 
> _ Because your heart deserves a whole lot more,  _
> 
> _ Than a broken girl like me.  _
> 
>   
>    
> 

Her trembling breath paused as she finished on the word ‘me’. He felt as though she saw right through him, he turned to glass in her sight. But she was still as opaque as the day he met her. The car had felt awkward then. The air too still, the streetlights outside too bright. They sat in silence, breath held, before y/n had blurted out a quick, “I should get home.” 

He still remembers the way her face fell in the moonlight as he agreed with her. He still regrets that, still regrets not pulling her in and kissing her right then and never letting her go. He dreams about that now, about the what ifs and what could have beens. He’s always been a coward.

He had written that night, pages upon pages of writings about her. Nothing but her. She filled his mind for weeks, and when he read his poetry on Thursday nights, she looked away. He could still feel the sting in his cheeks he felt that night when she called his work, “fantastical and unrealistic”. He could still feel the betrayal he felt that night as she ripped into him and left no trace. Despite her harshness, he felt her warmth, or so he thought.

She hadn’t written back. The letter he penned took days, but it wasn’t as if prison life was especially exciting. There weren’t enough words he could find to explain how he felt to her. He had never told her how he felt, not before his arrest. He had tried to write the letter in English, in French, in Latin. None of it made any sense, his cell filled with ruined and crumpled pieces of paper. He settled on an old song, the one he remembered playing softly in the car as she read her heart to him, changed to fit only her. 

>   
>  _ Hey there y/n,  _
> 
> _ What’s it like in DC? I’m a thousand miles away, but tonight you look so pretty. I know I can’t see you right now, but it doesn’t matter. I know. Forgive me for the song, it keeps me sane. I don’t know quite what to do with myself right now. It’s not often I get arrested for murders I didn’t commit, but when I do, it’s you I miss. Thursday was strange without your words there to comfort the mass in my head. I find that when you’re speaking it’s the only time I hear silence. Silence is something beautiful rarely created that I don’t experience often enough, but with you, it finds its way to my ears regularly. I know if you were here you’d chastise me about the concept of hearing silence, but you’ll just have to read it in this letter. I don’t have many updates, but know that I am not enjoying myself. Suffice to say, it is hard to enjoy one’s predicament when you aren’t sure when it will be over. I don’t know how to say what I want to say to you, so I won’t. Please be safe. You matter to me more than you know. _
> 
> _ Regards,  _
> 
> _ Spencer Reid _

She hadn’t written back. He had sent the letter within his second week behind bars. His life continued, slowly but surely, days passing and hopes of a response every day. And every day, nothing. It kills him, but he can’t blame her. He doesn’t know that he would write himself back if he was in her shoes. Still, he sent another letter. He put just a bit more of his soul into the second, still not quite ready to confess anything he might have considered confessing that night in her car.

>   
>    
>    
> 
> 
> _ Hey there y/n,  _
> 
> _ Don’t you worry about the distance, I’m right here if you get lonely. Not literally, you know that, of course. But you can always give this letter another read. Listen to my voice, it’s my disguise. I’m by your side. I’ll always be by your side, whether or not you need me. If you want me to leave, I’ll go. But until then, I’ll stay by your side. Everyone needs a loyal friend, right? I know I could use one right now. I don’t blame you for not responding. You have no proof that I am not a guilty man. But I will swear to you every day until the day that I die, I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. You don’t have to believe a word I say but I will write it, scream it, sing it until you do. Prison isn’t easy. I just want to hear your voice. The eidetic memory may help, but nothing is as good as the real thing. You don’t have to write back. I wish I could tell you everything I think.  ~~ I love you.  ~~ Be safe. _
> 
> _ Sincerely,  _
> 
> _ Spencer Reid _
> 
>   
>    
> 

She hadn’t written back. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Y/n, her smile, her voice, her face. Her smell was burned into his psyche like a brand. He couldn’t forget her if he tried. And oh, he tried. Menial tasks and thumbing through books he’d already read, folding the laundry three separate times, and yet she still infiltrated his brain. No matter how fast his fingers moved, her voice lilted in his head, ‘Spencer, Spencer.’ She helped him escape, helped him remain who he is through and through. She still hadn’t responded. A month and a half after his arrest, three weeks after his last letter. He figured he had one last try. He knew his walls were closing in, his mind delving away into itself for protection. He knew he couldn’t be himself much longer, but she was the last thing keeping his feet on the ground. 

> _ Hey there y/n,  _
> 
> _ I’ve got so much left to say, if every letter I wrote to you would take your breath away, I’d write them all. I’d write you every letter in the world if it meant I got to hear your voice again. If it meant you didn’t hate me for what I’ve become. Prison life isn’t easy and I’ve had to do things to survive that make me unrecognizable. I don’t know that I am the person you knew. But I know you are. You get me through all of this. I think about us, what we could’ve been if I had been who you needed, who you wanted. I love you, you know. I can see you walking down the aisle, I can see you holding our children. I can see the house we buy, the cars we fight over. I can see the quilts lining our bed in stolen kisses in the morning, and I can see the light in your eyes. I love you. I am yours. If you want me, if you don’t, I am yours.  _
> 
> _~~ Yours truly ~~ _
> 
> _ Yours, truly _
> 
> _ Spencer Reid _

Truth be told, Spencer had assumed they’d never prove his innocence. He had grown accustomed to being in prison, protecting himself and others in ways he never thought he’d do. So when JJ showed up, simply stating they were here to take him home, he couldn’t believe it. His disbelief paralyzed him, shock bounding through his body as he froze to the spot he was in. The only thing that got him moving again was her. Y/n. He’d see her. Her. 

His second shock of the day was his greeting as he exited the prison, not bound or confined for the first time in three months. The sun felt better out here, somehow.. Garcia was there, taking him in her arms, and he breathes in the scent of her perfume, of lilies and coffee. That’s not what shocks him though, but what lies behind Garcia. Her. She’s here. Y/n.

“Y/n.” He takes a step towards her, tentative, watching the tears fall from her eyes and feeling his own dash across his cheeks.

“Spencer Reid.” And there is not another word but her arms are thrown around his neck, and for the first time Spencer understands that home is not a place, but a person.

  
  



End file.
